


Find Him

by SpencerRemyLvr



Series: A Collection of Ideas [3]
Category: Criminal Minds, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Friendship, Missing, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 12:42:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3068315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpencerRemyLvr/pseuds/SpencerRemyLvr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Spencer up and quits his job and vanishes and the team is convinced that there’s something wrong, but no one believes them. They think he just up and quit and that’s it. Only, Garcia can’t find him anywhere, and they know there’s no way he’d just leave. So Rossi calls up an old friend, Logan, and asks if he can help find and retrieve their genius.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find Him

None of them saw it coming. Looking back at it, they all wondered how they couldn’t have seen it, how they’d missed the little signs and warnings that were now so glaringly obvious. They were profilers, a group of men and women trained to read things in people’s body language, to understand human behavior and use it to predict what someone was going to do. True, they were trained to do that on the job, with their Unsub—their bad guy—but it wasn’t a skill you just turned off when off the job. Though they tried not to, they all profiled one another all the time. It had become something automatic. Yet they’d missed every single sign that their youngest member showed and they were kicking themselves for it now. Maybe if they’d paid more attention, if they’d asked questions instead of just ignoring things, they might not be here now. Spencer might not be gone.

Derek had been the one to find out what was going on and bring them the news. Only, by then it was already too late. He went bright and early one morning to pick Spencer up for work, a little worried about how quiet his friend had been lately. When he got to Spencer's apartment building he went upstairs as he’d done so many times before. Only, this time, something was very, very different. When he got up there, he found Spencer's door open, and it was a sign of how their work affected him in that he didn’t just assume Spencer left the door open, or was on his way out. No, his hand went to his gun and his whole body braced for trouble while images of home invasions and Unsubs coming back for revenge flashed through his mind.

What he found was nothing like what he’d imagined. There was no Unsub, no attack, no signs of a struggle. In fact, there was nothing. Literally _nothing_. The whole apartment was empty. No furniture, no curtains, not even boxes with things packed inside. From floor to ceiling, the apartment was bare. Derek walked through it all and checked every single room. Each one was just as empty as the last—until he got to the kitchen. That was where he found the only things left in the entire apartment. One envelope, held to the fridge by a magnet. On the outside of the envelope were two words. _The Team._

Derek read through the letter standing there in the middle of Spencer's empty kitchen. As soon as he finished, he pulled out his cell phone. Though he knew it wouldn’t work, he still tried Spencer's number first, only to be told it was no longer in service. Then he dialed the number of his boss. “Hotch?” He said when the man answered. “Something’s happened to Reid…”

CXCX

One hour later, the BAU team was gathered in the empty living room of what had once been Spencer's apartment. Because, as Derek had found out, this was no longer Spencer's. The manager had been clear on that. What he said was one of the first things that Derek shared with the team once they were all there. “I spoke with his manager.” He told them, looking around at them all. Emily, JJ, Aaron, Dave, Penelope. This team that was more like family than friends. “He said that Reid showed up late in the day on Friday, after work from the sound of it, and that he told him he was moving and he’d be out by Monday. Then he paid him for the last month’s rent.”

“You said there was a letter?” Aaron asked. As always, he took control of the situation, the rock that held the team together no matter what was happening around them.

Derek blew out a breath and pulled the letter back out. Instead of handing it over, he unfolded it and read out the few words that had been scrawled across the page in Spencer's familiar handwriting.

“ _To my friends,_

_I know you’re upset right now and I apologize for that. I’m sorry that things had to be done this way. I’m sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to do this face to face. But I couldn’t run the risk of you guys trying to talk me out of this, and we all know that you would’ve tried._

_As you’ll have realized by now, I’m gone, and I don’t intend on coming back. Doing the job that we do, it takes so very much out of you. I’ve come to realize that it’s taken from me all that I can give. There’s nothing left. I’ve given my years, my innocence, my everything, all to this job. I’ve come to work every single day, forced to hide who I truly am from a government that would throw me out or imprison me if they ever found out I was a mutant. For these people, for this job, I’ve been kidnapped, drugged, killed and brought back, shot, beaten, hunted, tortured, humiliated—there is only so much a person can take before they reach their breaking point. I’ve reached mine. I finally understand now how Gideon could simply turn and walk away with only a letter of explanation. I was so furious with him for it back then, yet now, as I write this, I finally understand. Only, I won’t make his mistake. I won’t hurt a few of you by writing only to one. I address this to you all, my team that became my family, and I ask for your understanding and your forgiveness. Please understand that this is what I have to do. I need to leave._

_My apartment has been emptied, my resignation officially turned in. My time at the Bureau is done._

_I’m asking you to please respect my decisions and not try to find me. I’m asking you to let me go. This is what I need to do. I need a fresh start somewhere that isn’t surrounded by death and evil. I need to find somewhere that I’m free to be myself without fear of my big ‘secret’ being discovered. When I find that, when I finally find my peace once more, I promise you I’ll reach out. This isn’t a forever goodbye. This is just ‘until then’. Let me find myself first. Please. Do not try to find me._

_I never said it, but I love you all dearly. Take care of yourselves._

_Spencer_ ”

The room went for a few minutes once Derek was done reading. It was Penelope who finally broke that silence, unsurprisingly. “What do we do?” she asked them, looking from one face to the next. “We’ve got to find him!”

“No.”

Aaron’s firm voice startled everyone. All eyes turned to him and he quickly held up a hand for silence before they could say a word. “No.” He repeated firmly. “We are not going to hunt him down. We’re not going to do that to him. Reid’s made it very clear in there what he wants and what he needs and we’re going to respect that.”

“But sir,” Emily tried, just slightly hesitant, something that was rare for her.

“No.” Aaron repeated, and in his tone was a final note they all knew so well. It was the voice of their Unite Chief, not their friend, letting them know that this was his final point and he wasn’t going to be moved from it. “Like Reid said, our job takes a lot out of a person and it’s taken a lot from him. We all know the struggles he’s had over the years. Not once has he ever asked us for anything, not for any kind of help. The least we can do now is respect his wishes the one time he does ask us for something. We’re going to let him go and wait for when he contacts us. I think he’s earned that.”

How could they argue with that? It felt so wrong to just let him go, to not try and find him and find out if he was okay or what had happened to spark this, but Aaron was right. He’d earned the right to have them respect his wishes. He’d never asked them for anything before. They couldn’t just dismiss it the one time he did.

Still, as they walked out of the apartment, each one of them felt that small sense of wrongness in the back of their minds that would come to haunt them over the next few months.

CXCX

It took four months before the search for Spencer truly started. Though they hated it, they all tried to do as he asked and let him go. They tried to give him time to find what he was searching for and to let him be the one to reach out. It was no surprise, though, when the others found that Penelope had reached out. That she had, in fact, been reaching out for almost that entire four months. She didn’t tell anyone that she was doing it, not wanting to hear them argue with her to let him go. She couldn’t just let him go. She couldn’t! He was part of her family, one of her babies, and she had to know he was at least okay. Only, there was nothing for her to find. So, four months after they found that goodbye letter, Penelope walked into Aaron’s office and told him “I think something happened to Reid.”

They all gathered quickly in the conference room. All it took was mention of their friend and they all came. And in there, Penelope explained what she’d been doing.

“I know you guys said to just let him go, but I couldn’t do it.” She told them all. She didn’t look apologetic, though. She looked, worried. “I’ve been trying to track Reid down ever since we found that letter. I’ve kept my eye out and tried to hunt him down ever since then.”

“Tried?” Emily asked. She, like the others, had caught on to that one word and all its possible meanings.

Penelope winced and nodded her head. “That’s the thing—I haven’t found anything. And I do mean _anything_. It’s like he up and vanished off the face of the earth.”

“You haven’t found anything?” There was surprise in Derek’s voice when he asked that, as well as a bit of worry. He’d been worrying about his missing friend for a while now but he’d tried to convince himself that Spencer was just somewhere else, settling in. If he was, though, Penelope should be able to find him.

“Nothing.” She said. “No bills, no credit card activity, no cell phones. He hasn’t put his name on a lease, a utility bill, a new bank account—nothing. The only activity on his current bank account is the continued payments to his mom’s care, but other than that, he’s not showing up anywhere. If he just went somewhere and started over there should be some kind of paper trail. But there’s not. I even,” Pausing, she flushed a little, knowing they might not approve of what she’d done. “I even checked in discreetly with his Mom and found out that he hasn’t been sending her letters. Her doctor said they got one phone call, two weeks ago, but it was nothing more than a quick check on her condition, and he was off the phone as soon as they told him. Other than that, they’ve heard nothing from him.”

That had everyone sitting up a little straighter. They all knew just how close Spencer was to his mother. He’d admitted to Penelope once that he wrote to her every day. Derek knew that Spencer called once a week to check in with his mom’s doctor and to speak with her for a bit, if she was having one of her good days. He’d been taking care of his mentally ill mother since he was ten years old, maybe even before, and for him to have stopped writing and to call _once_ in four months was a very serious sign that something was terribly wrong.

“I can’t get the Bureau to approve a search.” Aaron told them. He’d made a few calls already after Penelope had spoken with him in his office. While waiting for her to gather the others, he’d tried to do what little he could, only to be stonewalled at each avenue. “They won’t stop us from looking for him, but we’re not going to be granted any time off to treat this like a case. As far as they’re concerned, he willingly left the Bureau and there’s nothing to support any trouble. Whatever we do, it’s going to be done on our personal time.”

“What can we do, though?” Penelope asked them. She’d been running this search on her own for four months now and was more than happy to let someone else be in charge. She worked best when given something to work with, little details to work out, while the main part of the plan fell to others. To Aaron, more specifically.

“If PG can’t find him online, no one can.” Emily said. She sat back, unconsciously picking at her finger. “We’ll have to profile him. Look at what might’ve happened around the time that he left. If he ran like this, something had to send him running.”

“Not just running. Hiding.” Dave pointed out.

“It would have to be something big.” JJ said. “Spence isn’t the type to just run. The only thing I can see that would make him run was if it was to protect someone.” _Us_. She didn’t say it but they all heard it. The only reason that Spencer would run would be to protect them from something. The same way that Emily had run when Doyle was after her. She’d run to keep her family safe. Spencer had to be doing the same thing. He was protecting them, or someone else equally important. But from what?

What was so bad that he hadn’t felt safe asking them for help?

CXCX

Even with the entire team on it, they were no close to finding him eleven weeks later. Spencer had been gone for almost seven months now. If it weren’t for the fact that Diana had received three letters from him during that time—each one of them carefully worded and mailed so that there were no clues left behind—they wouldn’t even know that he was still alive. But they had nothing to go on to help them find him. Penelope still couldn’t find him electronically and the others hadn’t been able to find anything that would’ve sent him running like this. Yet more and more they were sure that there was _something_ that had sent him running. Something important. They were just all afraid they were running out of time to find out what it was.

They were out of ideas and almost out of hope. Once more they were gathered in the round table room, their current case done with, and they were trying to think of anything that they could do that hadn’t already been done. Ideas were tossed back and forth and they were coming up with nothing.

All except for Dave. There was one idea sitting in the back of his head where it had been percolating for a little while now. He’d been loath to voice it before now. First he’d wanted to see if they could find Spencer on their own. However, it was beginning to look like that wasn’t going to be possible. Wherever Spencer had gone, he was beyond their abilities to find. But he might not be beyond someone else’s abilities. Dave waited for a lull in the conversation before he finally decided what he was going to do. “I might know someone that can help us.” He said into the silence.

Surprise spread around the table. All eyes turned towards him. “Who?” Derek asked quickly. His eagerness to do anything to find his friend showed clearly on his face.

“An old friend.” Dave said. It was the best he would give them. The less they knew about this, the better, and not just because he didn’t want to get their hopes up. There were quite a few reasons that it was best to keep these two different parts of his life separate from one another. They were on such opposite ends of the spectrum. “Let me go give him a call. You guys just continue with what you’re doing. I’m not sure he’ll be able to help, so I don’t really want to get into it yet. Not until I know.”

He could see that they all had questions. They didn’t ask, though. Aaron was the only one to do anything and all he did was nod at him.

Dave made sure his office door was shut and locked once he got inside. Then he settled down behind his desk and pulled out his cell phone, dialing a number he hadn’t used for almost a year now. He wasn’t even sure it would still work. But after only three rings, a familiar growling voice came over the line. “ _Rossi. Been a while since I’ve heard from ya._ ”

“I wasn’t even sure this number would still work. It’s been a few months since you left me that message.” Dave admitted, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. It had been seven months, actually, since he’d had a message on his answering machine letting him know about this new number. He’d only called it once, back then, before their lives got too busy for them to really talk at all. But he needed him now. “I need your help, Logan.”

“ _Whatever I can, Rossi. Just tell me what ya need._ ”

“I need you to help me find my friend.”


End file.
